By Our Correspondent<\/p>\n
The Federal High Court in Ado-Ekiti has cleared Engr. Toyin Okoro, APC candidate for Ekiti South Federal Constituency 1, dismissing the suit seeking to nullify his ticket.<\/p>\n
Delivering judgment on Thursday in Suit No: FHC\/AD\/CS\/19\/2026 filed by Bayo Babalotin, Justice Babs O. Keuwumi held that the plaintiff lacked the locus standi to challenge the primary.<\/p>\n
The court said it was audacious for Babalotin, who did not participate in the All Progressives Congress, APC primary, to seek to upturn its outcome.<\/p>\n
Justice Keuwumi also struck out the Ekiti State APC as 3rd defendant, with the order extending to both the state chapter and national body of the party.<\/p>\n
Lead counsel to Okoro, Dr. Femi Ogunlade Esq., said the court affirmed that only an aspirant can contest the validity of a primary.<\/p>\n
“The court dismissed the suit and affirmed that only an aspirant can challenge the conduct and validity of a primary election, not an interloper or a busybody, which the plaintiff is in this matter,” Ogunlade stated.<\/p>\n
He added that the decision aligns with Section 25 of the Constitution and the Electoral Act, which restricts the right to challenge a primary to participants.<\/p>\n
Okoro had emerged APC candidate for the January 2027 election after defeating incumbent Rep, retired Air Vice Marshal Adeniyi Ojuawo, with 9,798 votes to 1,842 votes.<\/p>\n
Okoro had subsequently urged Ojuawo to accept the outcome in good faith.<\/p>\n
The court action followed the invitation and interrogation of Okoro by the ICPC over allegations of public service rule violation for allegedly operating a private company to secure public contracts while serving as a senior legislative aide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent The Federal High Court in Ado-Ekiti has cleared Engr. Toyin Okoro, APC candidate for Ekiti South Federal Constituency 1, dismissing the suit seeking to nullify his ticket. Delivering judgment on Thursday in Suit No: FHC\/AD\/CS\/19\/2026 filed by Bayo Babalotin, Justice Babs O. Keuwumi held that the plaintiff lacked the locus standi to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18368,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18367\/revisions\/18368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}